The City Council will hold this public hearing open until they take up the item for final consideration on June 13, 2022.
President Jones All right, the next item is 9.2, Amendments to the Missoula Valley Water Quality District Ordinance and we have Todd Seib here to present on this item. Good evening Todd.
Todd Seib Good evening. Can everybody see my screen?
President Jones Not yet. Okay we can see it now, but if you can enlarge it so that we just see the slide? Perfect, there you go. Thank you.
Todd Seib I thank everybody and good evening. I'm really excited to present the revisions to the water quality ordinance also known as the water quality code tonight. So, I'm going to take you through a little bit of our history. You know, the Water Quality District's been around for quite a while, but it's been a while since we've updated, updated code and then kind of you know highlight some of the big changes that we're proposing. So, really to talk about the ordinance, we, we have to start with the aquifer, that's where the story really begins. In Missoula, the aquifer is our sole source of drinking water. It's, it's very productive. You know the tertiary sediments in our valley made up of coarse sand and gravel allow us to have a ton of water. It's one of the most productive and fast-moving aquifers in the country and we're really fortunate to have that. There's a flip side to that coin though because those same, those same features that allow us to have so much water also make it very vulnerable to contamination. There's really no natural protection from us to the water that's beneath our feet. So, you know if you imagined a leaking septic tank or even a you know, a gas station leak or a spill somewhere in the valley, eventually it would move through our valley to our discharge area. So, so what do we do with without this natural protection? I think what we do is we become the protection ourselves, right? So, we, we invest in infrastructure; we change our behaviors to protect this as a community because this is a community resource and so this ordinance really seeks to do that. With a combination of education and enforcement, we want to update the ordinance to you know let it continue to be a good tool to protect the aquifer because we haven't always done a super good job at, at protecting basically something that we all share you know the same cup. We all drink from the same straw, so to speak. So, in the, in the 80s and 90s, in Missoula, we really started to see, see some problems. Arsenic of course from Milltown Dam was getting into the drinking water for folks and that was detected, as well as a number of hydrocarbon leaks, diesel from the railroad. We had some, some issues with pesticides and herbicides, leachate from the landfill, and a number of others and one of the big ones of course was perchloroethylene from our dry cleaners and from degreasing automobile parts with floor drains. And so, and, and many more, and we kind of continue to find these, these historic sites. And so, during that same time that these were discovered, we also were designated a sole source aquifer by the, by the federal government. And so, the state recognized that hey it's really expensive to clean this stuff up. We really need to prioritize prevention and in 1991, the state statute establish the ability to do just that and form Water Quality Districts and so the Missoula Water Quality District is one of four in the state, and one of the main reasons we are here is because we have this aquifer. So, our, our goals and our, our mission was, and it continues to be to protect, preserve and improve the quality of our surface and groundwater. So, some in the audience might recognize these folks; this is the Missoula Valley Water Quality District up until fairly recently. So, in 1993, the district was formed; it's administered by the Health Department and in 1994, the current ordinance we're operating off of, the Aquifer Protection Ordinance was adopted. We've had a few updates to that over the years but not any significant ones for about 20 years. So, it is a health and safety related ordinance which means it applies outside the city limits but still within the boundaries of the district and the boundaries of the district are roughly the boundaries of our aquifer. So, this is what we look like now and Emily is still with us, thankfully. And so, we, the faces have changed but the goals are still the same. So, here's just an image of our aquifer/ordnance boundary. So, in, in pink here, in the stripes that would be the ordinance boundary and then in the blue that would be the Water Quality District boundary. So, so like I mentioned you know the last major update was in 2000 and 2008 we, we had a little bit of an update for some de-icing chemicals but our original ordinance largely came about because we, we had to react to what was going on in the valley and so we wrote a lot of best management practices for dry cleaners, for fueling stations, large you know if you're familiar with Philips 66 and the big Cenex fuel storage, for those types and we really rely heavily on a general prohibition in our ordinance that basically says don't cause contamination. And over the years, we've, we've kind of realized that we get questions. Well, okay, I like to power wash buildings, how do I not cause contamination? Or you know, I'm a painter or you know I have a restaurant I have grease stored in the alley, how do I not cause contamination? And so, we, you know this this idea of best management practices for these things kind of came out organically from just answering a lot of the same questions and getting you know complaints about, about certain things and, and I, I believe that you know if we can we have to let people know what's best before we can expect it. And so, that's, that's kind of the exciting part of this, this, this rewrite is we've taken all these best management practices that were existing in the ordinance, move them to a manual, and then added a lot of these common ones as well. So, the big goals of the revision were to incorporate what was becoming policy right? So, here's how we should tell people to you know control their sediment, so they don't pollute and really put those into, into code. And then, of course, you know it's a, it's a living document to some degree and we've, we've found parts that weren't worded just right, or you know old, old references and so we did a lot of cleanup language, as well. So where are we at? Where are we at? In the process, back before COVID really got underway, we, we were doing some presentations about these changes to the Water Quality Advisory Council and we've met with the city agencies that kind of overlap in terms of the water utilities, wastewater, et cetera. We've, we've taken these proposed changes through legal review at the County and the City. We've represented multiple times at public meetings with the Water Quality Advisory Council, as well as with the Board of County Commissioners and the Water Quality District Board and the Health Board. We've, we've attended the, the City Council committee meeting last, I think our goal was April-May, but I think it was you know a couple weeks ago now and then here we are today in June at this at this hearing. The next step hopefully after this this stage would be to revisit the Board of County Commissioners and the Water Quality District Board for extra territorial application of our, of our manual. We've had a number of public meetings about this, the, the draft has been on our website with a survey for over a year now. We sent letters to all of our current permitted folks back in April talking about this. We had a press release out and this Missoula county voice, which is similar to Engage Missoula has really, really been helpful, in terms of interfacing and honestly a couple of our, our BMPs were, were suggested to us proactively by, by, by businesses. So, Phillips 66 is very proactive and got to us pretty early, a few years ago actually and we've talked to some other, other businesses in town. And so, yeah this has been this has been on, on the books for a while and that original photo I showed of all those folks, they've contributed a ton to suggestions and I'm just at this point almost just the messenger at the end of this this long trail. So, so, now just want to get into some of the specifics that have changed. In the definitions section, we, we added allowable non-storm water discharge simply because this is not only consistent with the stormwater ordinance that's existing and this is a state definition, as well, but we get a lot of questions about this. So, what can go down a storm drain? You know, and, you know my basement's flooding, can that go the down the storm drain if I sump it out? And so, there's all of these examples of non-storm water that can actually go down a storm drain, mainly because it's cleaner than storm water. You know, it's, it's pumped ground water, it's irrigation, some of its irrigation returned water. So, we wanted to add that in in there, so we have that to refer to for folks. We added a couple new definitions like a fueling pad to refer to the area underneath the canopy where the fuel, fueling island is. A large capacity storage tank, this was a an important one because in our current version we didn't really distinguish between a facility that had a lot of oil in small cans versus one that had very large containers, and so that, well the BMPs just differ a lot with how you store it and it's not really related to the total volume. So, we had some, we had some rules that were originally embedded inside a definition of secondary containment and that's just not as clean as, as pulling those out, so we did we did that as well. And then kind of a another in the same vein, for threshold quantities, this refers to the amount of a substance someone could store before it would need to be secondarily contained or permitted. We added deicer to that and so deicer is typically you know stored in plastic tanks like these 10,000 gallon tanks here and the way the rule was written or is written currently, you wouldn't have to secondarily contain them unless it was going to be applied to city streets or, or county, public roads but really the threat of this of this storage is, is right here. It's, it's not when it's applied necessarily, so we need to make sure this is secondarily contained and so this is a fix it right there. So, that's what that looks like when that is contained, and this next photo shows why it's important to contain it because there was a spill shortly after that was done. So, the next section where we made some changes, the prohibited activities section. This, this section currently, I keep want to say previously because it seems like I've been working on this for a while but it's current, you know it just says don't cause contamination right. Do not place waste where it may cause pollution but then throughout the document, there were all these other prohibitions. And so, what we did is you know we really just wanted to make this cleaner and more readable for the public. S, in large part, we, we moved some stuff around. For, for fueling stations, right now, you know fueling stations do have a lot of safety features you know alarms and, and flapper valves and things to alert, alert station operators but they sometimes fail. And, and so far, we've, you know in the past 20-30 years, we have not seen a good way to engineer out, you know the risk at these places that sit above our aquifer and then of course there's always human, human error that we know we can never engineer out and so one thing that's been an industry standard in Missoula since 1994 is not putting these storms dry wells these, these sumps in gas stations because they basically act like a straw that goes right down into the gravel of our, of our aquifer. And so, to be honest, it's also been an industry standard in other states and locations in the country that source their water from drink, from aquifers as well. So, Wyoming and West Virginia and New jersey and Washington and Oregon and a handful of others also don't allow these types of storm drainages. And so, Missoula is kind of last, we're kind of lagging behind in that way and so we think it's time to, to be more protective on that end. This new prohibition on connecting a structure to a well of the structures with 200 feet of an existing public water supply was also something that was maybe intended the first time the ordinance was written but we wanted to make that more explicit. So, this next section the regulated substances and pollution prevention section, this essentially codifies or references this BMP in the BMPs that I mentioned. So, it puts that in the ordinance, it calls out a few specific activities you know like dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, auto repair and then puts that in the ordinance and references, references that. The fueling facilities section that I mentioned, there's, it's shortened so all the other BMPs that used to be in this section, they have been moved to the BMP manual and then this basically just gives, gives folks two years to come up, to come up to code. And so, these are some more specifics to the fueling facility BMPs. In short, stormwater and you know, fuel releases cannot go to a storm drain, there are other, other places for it to go, that are better for our drinking water. You know, containment vaults then go through oil water interceptors, oil water interceptors to a swale, catch chambers to another water interceptor, etc. And then, this large capacity tank inspections, that was something that Phillips 66 was interested in having us change. Without going into too much, into the weeds on that, basically there was an inspection schedule established by EPA that had to do with the floating lids of these tanks and, and the industry, API, the American Petroleum Institute, changed their standard, but EPA did not, and so our ordinance was referencing was consistent with EPA and we worked with Phillips 66 to change that because we still believe it's protective the way they're doing it. So, this is an example of some fueling facility drainage kind of gone wrong so to speak. So, you know we see about three to four significant releases every year in Missoula over the last 20 years and some of the examples here kind of highlight how you know some of these things just can't, they're accidents, you know they can't be prevented. So, we need to make sure the fuel doesn't go where we don't want it to. So, the fueling island collision in 2010, someone overfilling their vehicle in 2015, and you know stations that have this drainage are currently required to have absorbance on hand, but you can see it barely, you gotta get to it fast and it barely does, does the job. In 2018, here's a tank fueling overfill, so that's a tanker back there, so that's where you know you'll see these tankers usually it's early morning or evening and, and they'll be filling up the underground storage tanks. We just had a spill at a station this month and you know it was an example of human error right. So, so the valve needed to be changed out in one of those underground storage ports and so the breaker was turned off to shut that down so they could operate on it, but the wrong breaker was turned off. So, then someone pulled up to the pump and started getting gas and so fuel went everywhere. However, there's a good, good side to this story. They didn't have any dry wells, so it just went to the surface onto the asphalt and was able to be absorbed and we didn't have any environmental damage. The deicer specifications, like I mentioned earlier, changed so that these would also these tanks would also need to be secondarily contained and so secondary containment is just you know a tank within a tank right that that can accommodate 110% of the volume of that primary tank. So, if there was a spill, we wouldn't have to worry about that. And then there's a permit and so if you have certain quantities of chemicals in Missoula, we require you to get a permit and in that permit, we want you to tell us you know how are you going to prevent spills? Where are you going to store your chemicals? You know, do you have people trained? Do you have an emergency response plan? And so, one of the things in that current language is that we realized we required a plan, but we didn't make it very explicit that you have to follow the plan. So, we don't just want a piece of paper, we want that piece of paper to be actionable on site, so we want to clarify that. And then, you know, we do see some, some folks operating you know businesses and chemical companies that maybe they change you know maybe they change from storing you know sodium hydroxide to you know acetic acid or something like that. And so, we want to know when they change chemicals and increase their capacity, so that they don't end up storing it outdoors like this over here. And so that's basically the ordinance and then the BMP manual is really the pretty pictures you know and, and, and hey here's how you can do this and it's more educational, but it's still, still required. And so, this manual is also available, and we have a number of good, good examples because this is becoming a standard practice you know more or less across the country, we had a lot of manuals to look at for reference and so we were able to use a lot of good guidance. So, just some examples of you know above ground storage tanks, this, this photo shows two tanks containing two different types of fuels with the same type of fuel label, no secondary containment, hoses on the ground, permeable ground as well. And so, we have a section in there about above ground storage tanks because we do see more of these kind of you know used for landscaping and other, other type operators. We have more specific BMPs for, for anything related to road maintenance, so whether you're street sweeping or you're painting stripes or you're applying asphalt, we've had a number of complaints. So, you know, to oversimplify the BMPs, they, they really say do this in a way that doesn't go down a storm drain and here are some examples of ways you can do this right and the manual is really nice and flexible that way. So, we'll you know we'll say if you have a BMP that meets the, the intent of this that isn't explicit in here, we would love to hear it and love to approve it, but this we wouldn't like so this is this is cleaning out the asphalt tank in the nearest, in the nearest grass. We have chlorinated water discharge guidance in the manual, as well. So, this is what happens when you discharge a hot tub in an area that is not, that is prone to, to erosion. So, we wouldn't like this because sediment is actually a very big pollutant to our rivers, it can harm the fish and the ecosystem, so we want to make sure folks know how to do that in a different way, and this is in a similar way this is manure runoff down the road into Pattee Creek, restaurant grease, discharge from developing a well downtown, rinsing out concrete into a storm drain, etc. So, we've covered all those topics in that manual. We didn't just add things; we did remove things as well. This time around, we found some redundancies and some authorities that were already covered by other agencies that's it's kind of developed over time. We removed the LEPC reporting requirement, as part of the Federal Right to Know Act; it's really not something we need to enforce with, with the Water Quality District. Similarly with the UST requirements, those are enforced and reviewed by the state DEQ and so we, we also don't need to be redundant in that in that respect. So, overall, we really tried to reorganize and clarify, added some, some good definitions, took a lot of those, those policies and codified them, and got more specific with, with BMPs and then structurally moved those BMPs into their own manual. Yea, I, I think that's, that's about it. I don't want to waste anyone's time and would love if anyone had questions; I could take those.
President Jones Great, thank you Mr. Seib, just a ton of great information. First in order of business, I'll call for public comment on this item. Let me see if anyone in the attendee room is raising their hand. Okay, we have Tracy Campbell is raising her hand and if we can, yes, if you can unmute yourself Tracy, you should be able to give public comment on this item.
Tracy Campbell Great. Hi everyone, my name is Tracy Campbell. I am the superintendent for the City of Missoula Stormwater Utility. I just want to say we are super lucky to have the Water Quality District. There's a lot of other stormwater utilities around the state that are a bit jealous of us and the expertise that Todd, Elena, and their team, you know bring to town and I want to say we are overwhelmingly in support of these changes. We absolutely need to protect our water and we need to catch up with the rest of the country. Thank you.
President Jones Great, thank you. Is there any other public comment on this item? Not seeing any other public comment, any questions from Council? Mr. Nugent.
Alderperson Mike Nugent Thank you madam president. I do have a question and apologies if you touched on it, but who will do the enforcement of the, of the Pollution Prevention Plans? And I guess I ask that knowing that we've had other discussions around Health Department regulations on air quality and things of that nature and, and the discussion of who actually is available to enforce it from a staffing front comes up?
Todd Seib Sure. Yeah, so the Pollution Prevention Plans are currently part of the ordinance and we, we do that enforcement. We, meaning the Water Quality District so me, Elena, Craig. We conduct inspections on those facilities that currently have them. We have about 150 facilities and then if a new business opens, we would get an alert through the City and we would assess that business, and if they need a new Pollution Prevention Plan, we would review and approve that at that time and then and then do that. So, yeah that's, that's all internal staff.
President Jones Go ahead Mr. Nugent.
Alderperson Mike Nugent Thanks. So, so currently your you and your staff and your colleagues already do this but there really isn't a mechanism to enforce it?
Todd Seib No, there still is a mechanism to enforce it. The plan, the Pollution Prevention Plan, the way the ordinance is currently written it says you must have a plan and so we would always check on that but it, it doesn't say in the ordinance make sure you follow your plan. I think it's implied that you're going to follow the plan, so we just made that part in the, in the, in this rewrite more explicit that facilities must follow the plan as approved. So, we haven't had a problem necessarily that enforcing those plans, but we want to make that more explicit.
Alderperson Mike Nugent Perfect, that's kind of what I was getting at. So, what would happen if somebody were violating their plan under this new ordinance? What sort of sanctions or, or steps do you take?
Todd Seib Yeah, it's conversation. You know, it's you know in your plan you proposed. So-and-so is going to be the emergency contact, it sounds like this person no longer works here, you have 7 to 14 days to update your plan to reflect your current practices. You know, it's stuff like that.
President Jones Anymore? You're good. All right. Ms. Anderson.
Alderperson Anderson Thanks so much madam president. I guess my question is, I mean I appreciate all the facts and the kind of glad that we're finally bringing our code into line, but you said something at the very beginning that has stuck with me about the fact that we're really uniquely positioned in terms of the nature of our aquifer and, and where it's a huge asset for us. It also because of the way it is, is very susceptible to you know contamination and given the fact that we're trying to catch up with other places, do we feel, in your expertise, does this go far enough to protect because once contaminated you know I can only imagine what would need to be happen what would have to happen to clean that up and we've seen you know unfortunately in other places where you know there isn't necessarily the money to fix things when things have gone awry and so prevention's worth a pound of cure? So, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to answer that.
Todd Seib Yeah absolutely, that's great. Yeah, the, the prevention is definitely worth a pound of cure in this case. You know, luckily I think those big, those big contamination events that we used to see so to speak in the 80s with, with industry and floor drains, I think a lot of that's behind us and we are still dealing with some historic contamination like, like we know about at BNSF, but right now our big threat would be these, these little inputs. So, what they call non-point source pollution, you know. So, it's, it's, it's over here in this alley a, a grease spill or a petroleum spill. It's over here you know in this parking lot and so collectively all those small those small things add up and I think, I think this does go far enough. Currently with what we're seeing in Missoula, we're lucky to have the stormwater utility, as well and, and Missoula Water you know testing our water, monitoring stormwater, looking for pollutants, and a lot of boots on the ground to kind of identify new threats as they come up and I think you know kind of the beauty of our, of our prohibition section that you cannot pollute, paired with now this manual that could be you know that we could update as needed over time when we identify these new threats. I think it's going to be just a really good tool set; you know to kind of stay on top of this.
President Jones Followup?
Alderperson Anderson Yes, please.
President Jones Go ahead.
Alderperson Anderson President, thanks so much. I guess, one I appreciate the fact that now with the stormwater utility, we have more opportunities to do a lot of work. The other thing that came to my mind is that with our billing system now being all in one billing there's also an opportunity to communicate and I'm wondering if we've have thought about or have an opportunity to you know send out a one-pager Q&A, infographic, something like that to not that necessarily these regulations drastically change what people do but it's a good opportunity to take, to educate folks on what to do, what not to do, and what resources say you have grease have paint how to properly dispose of it.
Todd Seib Yeah, yeah, I love that, and I know we've already worked together a little bit with, with stormwater on those kinds of things. We've developed some, some educational materials and so people love getting mail nowadays; it's such a rare thing. So, they'll open it and read it and look at this great poster that we developed. So, so yeah I agree that's, that's a good opportunity now.
President Jones Ms. Sherrill.
Alderperson Sherrill Yeah thanks and I really appreciate all the work that's gone into these because obviously we're, our water is really important and we are sitting on top of it, as we are reminded regularly. The other thing about water though is it moves and if I missed this I apologize in your presentation, but could you speak a little bit to any coordination we're doing well I'm for us I'm more worried about upstream but obviously there's downstream as well?
Todd Seib Yeah, that's right water, water definitely moves and so you know through, through a number of different ways we do coordinate. Surface water is something that we're doing a lot more work with, with local kind of riparian partners and educational groups to, to look at all the different inputs into our big rivers, the Clark Fork and the Bitterroot. You know, the Clark Fork is really what starts, it's kind of the start of our aquifer so to speak and so we are interested in that. On more of an advocacy side, we, we do partner with other groups like the Clark Fork Coalition and even the EPA, to, we keep a really close eye on super fund sites, federal and state superfund sites. So, we work closely with partners at DEQ, as well because all this water is connected and you know the other, the other three Water Quality Districts I mentioned, we partnered with them as well because we kind of have unique, you know, situations, but, but to a large extent, we all have the same goals and so we meet with them on a yearly basis as well.
Alderperson Sherrill Thanks.
President Jones Great, thank you. Are there any other questions from Council? And any of our Councilors attending virtually, raise your hand if you want to ask a question. I'm not seeing any. Mr. Seib thanks for a ton of great information tonight with this presentation. It's always just fascinating but also I think it's a I'm going in the great direction with the, the revisions to this. So, this was opening our public hearing. We're going to keep this item open and have final consideration on June 13, 2022. So, thank you Mr. Seib, appreciate it.
Todd Seib Thank you.